A Street Fit for a King: Naming Places and Commemoration
in the American South*
Derek H. Alderman
East Carolina University
The naming of streets after Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) is an important arena for African Americans as they rewrite the landscape of southern identity and commemoration. While less ornate and ostentatious than museums and
monuments, MLK streets are powerful and highly contested cultural geographies because of their potential to connect disparate communities and incorporate a vision of the past into the spatial practices of everyday life. They reveal
the importance of location, particularly intra-urban location, to public memorialization. Naming streets for King is a
significant part of the nonmetropolitan South as well as larger cities and dependent upon the relative size of a city’s
African-American population. When estimating the intra-urban character of MLK streets within several southern
states, findings suggest that they are located in census areas that are generally poorer and with more African Americans than citywide averages. Analysis reveals a geographic unevenness in the frequency of businesses having an address identified with King. When compared with the stereotypical American thoroughfare of “Main” Street, the
address composition of MLK streets appears to be more residential in nature, although there is significant state by
state variation. Key Words: street naming, Martin Luther King, commemoration, American South.
Introduction
A
frican Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities are using direct political
action to challenge and change the commemoration of the past within cultural landscapes,
constituting what Rhea (1997) called the “race
pride movement.” Blacks in the southeastern
US have taken a particularly active role in reconstructing commemorative landscapes—from
calling for the removal of Confederate symbols
from public places to the building of memorials
and museums honoring the civil rights movement (Secrest and May 1989; Auchmutey 1993;
Leib 1995; Cobb 1996; Sack 1996; Armada
1998; Davis 1998). Slain civil rights leader
Martin Luther King, Jr. occupies a controversial focal point in this new movement to recognize the historical achievements and struggles
of African Americans. Controversy over memorializing King is not limited to the South
but constitutes what Zerubavel (1996) called a
“national mnemonic battle,” as evident in past
and ongoing debates over establishing and observing a holiday in his honor (The Economist
1983; Sigelman and Walkosz 1992; Potholm
1993; Alozie 1995; Mason 1998; Chicago Defender 1999).
An important dimension of the race pride
movement has been the naming of places after
African-American figures in history (e.g., Blackmon 1992; Horswell 1993; Samuels 1996). As
suggested by a growing number of scholars,
place names participate in larger struggles over
social and political identity and are used for resisting the hegemonic order as well as reproducing it (Cohen and Kliot 1992; Berg and
Kearns 1996; Myers 1996; Gonzales Faraco
and Murphy 1997; Herman 1999). Although
largely neglected by scholars, the names attached to schools, businesses, streets and other
features have an important place in the symbolic
changes and struggles occurring within the
American South ( Jensen 1997; Alderman and
Beavers 1999). This paper provides an empirical
look into one of the most widespread of the region’s new commemorative practices: the naming
of streets after Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK).
While reflecting the increased cultural and
political power of blacks and the liberalization
of white attitudes, MLK streets are often sites
of struggle for African Americans. Geography
plays a central role in these struggles (Alderman
1996). Controversy often revolves around issues
of determining which street in the city is most fit
or appropriate to identify with King. Debate
frequently arises over the confining of MLK
* I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers of this paper. Helpful comments and support were also provided by Andrew Herod, Donna
G’Segner Alderman, and John Shelton Reed. A paper containing portions of this study won the 2000 J. Warren Nystrom Dissertation
Competition, sponsored by the Association of American Geographers.
Professional Geographer, 52(4) 2000, pages 672–684 © Copyright 2000 by Association of American Geographers.
Initial submission, June 1999; revised submission, December 1999; final acceptance, February 2000.
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.
A Street Fit for a King
streets to predominantly African-American areas
of the city. African-American activists often
argue that Martin Luther King’s commemoration is important to all races and hence should
be accessible—locationally and culturally—to
larger and different publics. The naming of
major commercial thoroughfares is also contentious, as many black leaders demand that King’s
name be placed on prominent and frequently
traveled streets. The most vocal opposition often
comes from businesses, citing—whether legitimately or not—the cost and burden of reprinting forms, stationery, address labels, and advertisements containing the address change. Some
business and property owners have gone so far
as to express concern about the economic impact of having their street identified with King
and, as they perceive it, the black community.
Chattanooga, TN aptly illustrates how the issues of location, business, and race intersect with
each other when naming a street after King. In
January of 1982, the city changed the name of
Ninth Street to M.L.King, Jr. Blvd., ending several months of debate over the issue (Chattanooga Times 1982). One of the major opponents
to the name change was a real estate developer
who owned a downtown office building on the
west end of the street and was in the process of
building another one there. The developer argued that he might not be able to rent office
space in a building with a MLK address because
of the racial overtones it might create. He supported the renaming of East Ninth Street but
not West Ninth Street. Specifically, he was
quoted as saying:
W. Ninth Street is not related to King . . . Ninth
Street is no longer a solid black street as it was
when I was a kid growing up. . . . It is no longer
a residential street or a rather rundown business
street. It is a top class business street that can
play a great part in the future of Chattanooga. . . .
When giving street names of this sort
(M.L.King Jr., Blvd.) . . . it implies some overtones that, perhaps, are not acceptable in the
fashion West Ninth Street is now being developed (Chattanooga Times 1981a, B1).
When the Chattanooga city council refused to
rename Ninth Street, 300 African Americans
marched along the street. Armed with ladders
and singing “We Shall Overcome,” they defiantly yet temporally renamed the street by
pasting street signs with bumper stickers that
read “Dr. ML King, Jr. Blvd.” (Chattanooga News-
673
Free Press 1981). After this protest and an emotional request from a coalition of black and
white ministers, the council reversed its decision and the entire length of Ninth Street was
renamed for King (Chattanooga Times 1981b).
Despite the success in Chattanooga, journalists report that African Americans in the South
have generally been unsuccessful in attaching
King’s name to prominent thoroughfares that
cut through business districts and unite white
and black communities (Towns 1993). For instance, one news reporter described Martin
Luther King Drive in Jackson, Mississippi as a
“boulevard of broken dreams” because crime,
poverty, racial segregation, and physical deterioration dominate the street (Yardley 1995). The
supposed inferiority of MLK streets has even
found its way into the discourse of humor. As
Chris Rock explained in his HBO comedy series,
“if a friend calls you on the telephone and says
they’re lost on Martin Luther King Boulevard
and they want to know what they should do, the
best response is, “Run!” (Page 1998, 28).
Scholars have devoted little attention to documenting the occurrence of MLK streets inside or outside the South. Nor have they spent
much time determining the “place” of these
named streets in the racial and economic geography of cities and towns. Stump (1988) is responsible for the earliest and, to date, only
study to measure spatial variation in MLK
street naming. While it was evident across the nation, he found that street naming was concentrated in the southeastern United States (Fig. 1).
In addition to being over a decade old, Stump’s
data source (National Five-Digit Zip Code and Post
Office Directory) excluded smaller places, thus limiting our understanding of MLK street naming as
distributed across the southern urban hierarchy.
Stump suggested that the popularity of MLK
streets in the South was a function of the large
black population living in the region. However,
he neglected to examine the racial composition
of cities involved in the naming process. By focusing so intently on the national and regional
distribution of MLK streets, Stump also failed to
consider the importance of intra-urban location
and the types of streets identified with King.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the emerging cultural geography of MLK
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Volume 52, Number 4, November 2000
Figure 1: Distribution of MLK streets in the US, 1987. Source: Stump (1988). Reprinted with permission.
streets in the American South, and, in doing so,
explore the locational embeddedness of commemoration. First, as way of background, I establish the analytical value of examining street
names and outline their unique political and
commemorative qualities. Street naming illustrates the importance of location and geography to the commemorative process. The remainder of the paper then documents, maps,
and analyzes the geographic location, distribution, and characteristics of streets named after
King. I employ census data sources and an electronic telephone directory, an underutilized tool
in current place name research. After I identify
national patterns in streets bearing King’s name,
my analysis shifts to eleven southern states,
where street naming is examined in relation to
the size and racial composition of cities. Finally,
given the apparent importance of intra-urban
location to the process of commemorating King
through street naming, I estimate the residential
and commercial character of MLK streets
within southern cities and towns. In this process,
two primary questions are addressed. First, how
do census areas containing MLK streets compare to their respective cities in terms of racial
and income characteristics? Second, how often
are businesses and other non-residential institutions with an MLK street address found?
Getting Street Smart:The Importance
of Location to Commemoration
Geographers have traditionally treated streets
in geometric terms, often classifying and study-
ing them as arcs, flows, and networks. Recent
literature suggests an alternative “reading” of
streets, one that views them as important cultural and political arenas. “Streets are the terrain
of social encounters and political protest, sites of
domination and resistance, places of pleasure
and anxiety” (Fyfe 1998, 1). Streets, and transportation in general, do not operate in a race
and class-neutral society: a politics underlies
their organization, use, and meaning (Bullard
and Johnson 1997).
Street naming, particularly for commemorative purposes, represents an important and
highly contested practice in the political and
cultural geography of cities. For example, Yeoh
(1996) defined the strong ideological place that
street renaming held in Singapore’s attempt to
build a sense of national identity after independence. Perhaps Azaryahu (1997, 480) stated the
importance of street names best: “In the jungle
of modern cities, street names are more than a
means of facilitating spatial orientation. Often
they are laden with political meanings and represent a certain theory of the world that is associated with and supportive of the hegemonic
socio-political order.”
Commemorative street naming is a powerful
and controversial practice because it not only
participates in the construction and reification
of a selective vision of the past but also incorporates that version of history into the spatial
practices of everyday life (Azaryahu 1996, 321).
Because of its practical importance, street naming inscribes its ideological message into many
texts of urban life. Yvonne Aikens (1990, B1),
A Street Fit for a King
who pushed to have a street named for King in
Tampa, FL, expressed this point well:
A street touches more people than if they had
just named a building after him downtown . . .
People who wouldn’t go to a building or a park
named for King drive on a major thoroughfare
such as Buffalo (now Martin Luther King, Jr.
Blvd.) for business or personal reasons. . . . They
see the name at intersections, on signs pointing
to the road, on maps. It pops up on addresses,
letters, business cards, constantly keeping King’s
name before the public. . . . More people come in
contact with it.
The power and politics of commemorative
street naming lie in its dual and simultaneous
existence as historical referent and spatial designation (Azaryahu 1996). A street name’s practical function does not necessarily lessen its
symbolic function. Rather, the commemorative
and political importance of street names come
from their importance as markers of location.
As suggested in a growing body of literature,
public commemoration is not simply about determining the appropriateness of remembering
the past in a certain way; it is also a struggle
over where best to locate or place that memory
within the cultural landscape (Charlesworth
1994; Johnson 1994, 1995; Alderman 1996;
Azaryahu 1997; Till 1997; Johnson 1999).
The importance of location in commemorating King through street naming is perhaps
no more apparent than in Brent, AL, where
blacks protested the attachment of King’s name
onto a road leading to a garbage dump. Reverend W.B. Dickerson, who petitioned the city
council to rename another, more prominent
street, was quoted as saying: “We want [Martin
Luther King Street] up where people can really
see it” (Yarbrough 1992, A3). The situation in
Brent affirms Johnson’s (1995, 51) suggestion
that geography is not simply the “incidental
material backdrop” for memory but plays an
active role in constructing the meaning of commemoration. As Johnson (1995, 63) also asserted, “. . . geographers are just beginning to
examine the relationship between the memorialization of the past and the spatialization of
public memory.”
While participating with memorials, monuments, and museums in the spatialization of
memory, the street name has a unique locational dynamic. As suggested in this editorial,
streets have a connectivity that contributes to
675
their commemorative power and politicized
nature: “Renaming a street is a uniquely appropriate way to honor King. Streets unite diverse
neighborhoods. They touch all ages, all races,
all economic levels, and the resident and the
visitor equally. They link people and places that
otherwise would remain insular” (St. Petersburg
Times 1990a, 2). The notion of connectivity is
of particular symbolic relevance to the commemoration of Martin Luther King. For instance, African-American activist Allen Stucks
envisioned Tallahassee’s Martin Luther King,
Jr. Boulevard in terms of King’s goal of racial
integration: “‘Rev. King was about togetherness . . . If his name was going to be on a street
in Tallahassee, it had to be on one that connected one neighborhood to another. And it
had to be one you could find without having to
wiggle through the black community’” (quoted
in Ensley 1999, 1A). In the case of Tallahassee’s
MLK Boulevard, the street “connects one of
the nation’s oldest historically black universities to the entire city. It traces through black
neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, businesses, parks and cemeteries” (Ensley 1999,
1A). In another example of how King’s commemoration is represented and understood
through the connectivity and accessibility of
city streets, Jim Marshall (1999, B6), then mayor
of Macon, GA, stated:
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is Macon’s
“front door,” the primary entranceway to Macon’s historic downtown. It begins at Exit 2 of
I-16, crosses the Ocumulgee River on the Otis
Redding Bridge and continues for several miles
. . . Macon lies at the heart of Georgia. Macon’s
Martin Luther King Jr., Boulevard leads to the
heart of Macon—a fitting tribute to a man
whose courage and lessons changed the hearts of
many Americans.
As evident in the preceding statement, the locational power of MLK streets is also about
how well they connect with existing commemorative and historic spaces. In Eatonton, GA,
for example, Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive
runs parallel and in close proximity to Alice
Walker Drive, named for the prize-winning
author and area native. While consisting of
largely black residences, both streets work together to create a spatial network of AfricanAmerican memory, connecting local and national history.
In conclusion, the dynamics behind com-
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Volume 52, Number 4, November 2000
memorative street naming are similar to those
behind establishing and observing a holiday.
Holidays, like streets, extend into the lives and
geographies of people who may not identify
with the commemorated person (Gallagher
1995). Of course, because of racial and economic segregation in cities, not all streets unite
diversity in the way described in the preceding
quotations. As suggested by many observers, it
is often difficult to name streets for King that
cut across and connect diverse elements of the
city. However, this statement gives us keen insight into why African Americans in the South
and throughout the nation are choosing commemoration through street naming and, more
importantly, pushing for the naming of large,
prominent streets: it is the potential of streets,
through their location, to touch and connect
disparate social groups that makes naming so
controversial.
The National Distribution
of MLK Streets
One useful, yet largely unexplored, resource
for identifying street naming patterns is electronic telephone directories, which are available online as well as on CD-ROM (Alderman
and Good 1996). Using the 1996 PhoneDisc
PowerFinder database of address records, a nationwide search was conducted for streets
named in honor of Martin Luther King. As
listed in the PhoneDisc database, the names attached to streets varied. In the majority of
cases, street addresses contained King’s full
name (Dr. Martin Luther King, Martin Luther
King, Jr., or Martin Luther King). However, a
significant number of streets were listed as simply having MLK and ML King in their names.
All conceivable name scenarios were explored.
In total, 483 towns/cities in the US were
found to have a named street as of 1996. Figure
2 shows the general location of these streets.
MLK streets appear most prevalent in the
southeastern US, particularly in the eastern
portion of Texas, along the Mississippi River,
along the Gulf region, and in what has been
termed the “Black Belt” regions of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. However, there are other
noteworthy concentrations in California, the
north central states of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, and the Middle Atlantic States of New Jersey and Maryland. Naming
streets after King is evident across the nation
with the exceptions of parts of the New England
and West Mountain/Great Plains regions.
In 1996, sixty-seven percent of the nation’s
MLK streets were located in the six southern
states of Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama. When the states of
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Tennessee, and Arkansas were included, the
South accounted for 77% of MLK streets. This
group of eleven southern states constitutes the
study area for this paper’s remaining analyses.1
Georgia and Mississippi led the country with
72 and 65 MLK streets respectively in 1996.
When cities with MLK streets as a percentage
Figure 2: Distribution of MLK streets in the US, 1996. Source: compiled by the author using PhoneDisc
PowerFinder (1996).
A Street Fit for a King
of total census-defined places are examined,2
Mississippi leads the nation with the highest
rate of street naming (20% of places) followed
by Louisiana (13%), Georgia (12%), Alabama
(7.4%), Florida (6.2%), and Texas (4.2%). Surprisingly, relative to other southern states, street
naming has a rather small presence in South
Carolina (3.2% of places), Arkansas (1.6%),
Tennessee (2.1%), North Carolina (2.8%), and
Virginia (1.4%). While MLK street naming is
pronounced in the South, the rate of the movement is not consistently strong throughout the
entire region.
MLK Streets along the Southern
Urban Hierarchy
In order to examine how MLK street naming
might vary by city size within the South, placebased population data were collected from the
1990 US Census for the eleven aforementioned
southern states. Figure 3 compares the percentage share of the region’s MLK streets
within certain population ranges to the percentage share of all places within these same
population ranges. When compared to the region’s overall urban hierarchy, MLK streets appear to be overrepresented in every population
category except the less than 2,500 people category, which is the smallest population range.
More than 60% of southern cities with a MLK
street have populations of 9,999 or less. The
largest share of MLK streets (41%) is found in
677
places with populations ranging from 2,500 to
9,999. In fact, the median population size of
places with a street named after King is 4,909
for Alabama, 5,595 for Georgia, 5,526 for Louisiana, and 4,570 for Mississippi. While MLK
streets are clearly underrepresented in the lowest population size range, this should not negate the fact that 20% of all places with an MLK
street have populations of less than 2,500. This
underrepresentation may result from several
factors, ranging from low levels of political/
social power of African Americans at this spatial scale to the fact that such places, because of
their small size, lack a large enough base of roads
from which to name or rename. In summary,
while MLK street naming is well represented
in larger cities, the toponymic practice is not
limited to these areas but is, in fact, a significant
part of the cultural landscapes of the nonmetropolitan South.
MLK Streets and Relative Size of
African-American Population
If street naming is a movement led by African
Americans, we might expect to see a relationship between the frequency of MLK streets
and the relative size of a city’s black population.
In order to understand the relationship between street naming and the relative size of a
city’s black population, data were collected on
the racial composition of places in the South
with an MLK street. The population of the av-
Figure 3: Distribution of MLK streets in the South by city population size.
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Volume 52, Number 4, November 2000
Figure 4: Distribution of MLK streets in the South by relative size of city’s African-American population.
erage town/city in the eleven examined southern states is almost 18% African-American. For
places with an MLK street in these same states,
the African-American population, on average,
constitutes about 39% of the local population.
Figure 4 examines more closely MLK street
naming as distributed among southern towns
with similar racial composition. There appears
to be an abundance of street naming in all
places except where African Americans are less
than 10% of the total population. MLK streets
are scarce (but still exist) in places in which less
than 1% of the population is black. More than
65% of MLK streets in the eleven southern
states are in cities where 10% to 49.9% of the
population is classified by the census as black.
When compared to the relative size of the
black population in all places, MLK street
naming appears to be most overrepresented in
places where the African-American population
is at least 30% of the total population.
The Intra-Urban Context
of MLK Streets
As established earlier, naming streets after King
often revolves around issues of intra-urban
location—that is, determining where King’s
memory is best situated or placed within the city’s
larger social and economic geography. Despite
the importance of these issues, two geographic
questions remain unanswered empirically. First,
are MLK streets generally located in poor,
African-American areas of the city, as suggested
by numerous journalists and activists? Second,
given the opposition that affected businesses of-
ten pose to street naming, what is the likelihood
of non-residential establishments having an address identified with the civil rights leader?
The Residential Character of MLK Streets
The purpose of this section is to describe the
residential characteristics of areas on, and surrounding, streets named after King. Specifically, I collected race and income related-data
from the 1990 US Census for census areas containing MLK streets and then compared these
values with figures for their larger respective
cities. The Tiger/Census Tract Street Index (Ver.
2) was used to identify census tracts and block
numbering areas (BNAs) that contain a street
or portions of a street named after Martin
Luther King, Jr. Two hundred and twenty census tracts and BNAs in 117 southern cities were
identified as containing a MLK street. These
census areas were unevenly distributed across
nine of the eleven southern states under examination. No named streets were found in the
database for Arkansas or Virginia. The Tiger/
Census Tract Street Index provides census tract/
BNA information for more than 74 million individual residential addresses in 3,076 of the
3,141 US counties, representing roughly 70%
of all addresses in the country. Coverage within
counties ranges from as poor as 10% to better
than 90%. Street address information within
the digital index is accurate as of April 1, 1990,
which greatly limits our ability to locate and
identify the census tracts of more recently
named streets.
Table 1 summarizes the findings of the analysis. Overall, census areas with an MLK street
A Street Fit for a King
679
Table 1 Comparison of Racial and Income Characteristics, MLK Census Areas vs. Respective Cities
STATE (Number of Census Tracts/BNAs Containing MLK Street)
AL
(18)
African-Americans as % of population
Average for MLK census areas
Average for respective cities
Percent of MLK census areas . city
GA
(35)
56
15
89
LA
(32)
MS
(17)
7,679 8,672 8,335 8,579 7,524 7,999
9,105 14,565 10,896 12,034 13,006 11,916
53
92
50
83
92
79
Black per capita income
Average for MLK census areas
Average for respective cities
Percent of MLK census areas , city
7,091
6,513
44
4,447
5,004
72
5,076
5,130
47
7,266
6,928
42
59
15
87
TOTAL
(220)
7,528
9,542
59
6,335
5,539
0
58
14
100
TX
(62)
8,453 9,209 7,789
9,802 12,700 12,006
72
78
86
7,564
8,692
69
64
38
100
TN
(12)
Total per capita income
Average for MLK census areas
Average for respective cities
Percent of MLK census areas , city
6,470
6,666
60
82
26
100
SC
(4)
65
39
88
6,634
6,698
63
63
40
82
NC
(13)
79
43
97
White per capita income
Average for MLK census areas
Average for respective cities
Percent of MLK census areas , city
64
41
83
FL
(27)
6,357
7,858
81
65
28
90
6,214
6,760
64
11,517 9,978 9,415 12,112 11,292 12,674 11,958 9,139 8,187 10,072
12,935 14,789 20,757 14,489 13,822 18,793 16,113 13,657 16,342 16,124
78
78
86
59
59
92
75
83
94
80
have a significantly larger proportion of African Americans than we would expect from city
averages. Specifically, the average MLK census
tract/BNA is 65% African American, while the
city average is 28%. While this figure points to
the location of MLK streets in predominantly
African-American parts of the city, it really
masks the intensity of this pattern. For instance, 198 (90%) of the 220 census tracts examined had a higher proportion of blacks than
their respective cities. Seventy-six (or 35%) of
examined census tracts had populations that
were 90% or greater African-American. In fact,
four census tracts reported as entirely (100%)
black. Nonetheless, MLK streets were located
in 67 census tracts/BNAs where whites were the
majority. This finding prompts us to consider
that, while MLK streets in the South are generally located in majority African-American areas
of the city (specifically, two-thirds of the time),
they are not completely removed from the white
community. However, because the coverage of
census tracts/BNA is much larger than one
street, this still does not disqualify the possibility
that the population on these specific streets is indeed largely, if not all, African-American. One
hundred percent of MLK census areas in North
Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee have
a larger proportion of African Americans than
their respective cities. Georgia follows with 97%.
The average total per capita income for an
MLK census tract is $7,999, which is significantly lower than the average city per capita in-
come of $11,916. This would indicate that
MLK streets are located in generally poorer
areas of the city. Indeed, 173 (or 79%) of the
220 census tracts/BNAs examined had per capita incomes lower than their respective city’s
per capita income level. What is less clear from
Table 1 is the difference in per capita income
for blacks in MLK census areas as compared to
overall city averages. Per capita income for African Americans living in census areas containing a street named after King is $6,214, slightly
lower than the average city per capita income
for blacks of $6,760. In the case of Alabama,
South Carolina, and Tennessee, per capita income for African Americans in MLK census
areas is actually higher than citywide levels of
black income. While this evidence may suggest
little difference in the income of blacks whether
they live in a census tract/BNA with a MLK
street or not, it is important to keep in mind
that the majority (141 or 64%) of the examined
MLK census areas do have black per capita incomes lower than the income level of blacks
across their respective cities. In addition, 43 (or
30%) of those 141 census tracts/BNAs have
black per capita incomes that are at least $2,000
lower than the citywide figure for African
Americans. The hypothesis that MLK streets
are located in generally poorer areas of the city
is further substantiated by the marked difference in average per capita income for whites
living in MLK census tracts when compared to
the average citywide income level for whites.
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Volume 52, Number 4, November 2000
Overall, whites living in census areas with a
MLK street average a per capita income of
$10,072, which is higher than the per capita income for blacks across the city and within
MLK census areas but lower than the average
city income for whites of $16,124. Specifically,
177 (80%) of census tracts/BNA have a per
capita income for whites lower than the white
income level for their respective city. Ironically,
at this level of analysis, MLK streets appear to
be associated more with lower incomes among
whites than among African Americans, which
may suggest a closer analysis of class dynamics
as they interact with race relations.
These findings should be approached with
caution. These census tract/BNA-level data are
not at the geographic level of the actual street,
and hence we risk false generalizations. Additionally, there is a certain amount of colinearity
in the variables examined here. Nevertheless, the
findings provide insight into the intra-urban
residential context of MLK streets, an insight
missing from previous studies and discussions.
However, these establishments were distributed across the region unevenly, with 1,598 (or
45%) concentrated in five Metropolitan Statistical Areas: Tampa MSA (689), Atlanta MSA
(388), Dallas MSA (188), Houston MSA (168),
and Fort Myers MSA (165). The states of Florida and Texas alone accounted for 53% of the
South’s nonresidential MLK addresses found
in the database, although they claim only 27%
of the region’s named streets. In contrast, I
found no business addresses in 137 (or 38%) of
the 373 southern cities with a MLK street. One
hundred and sixty-one (or 43%) of cities in the
database had one to three businesses located on
these streets. Rather than being as frequent as
the number of 3,564 may suggest, the median
number of non-residential addresses per city
with a MLK street was two.
As a way of estimating the relative extent of
nonresidential development along named streets,
I calculated the ratio of residences versus businesses with an MLK address. For the nation as
a whole, in 1996, there were 2.1 times more
residences than businesses located on streets
named after King. Within the eleven southern
states under examination, the ratio increased to
2.4. Table 2 provides a state by state breakdown
of the residential to nonresidential ratio. Only
three southern states had MLK streets with a
ratio of residence to business smaller than the
national norm. Florida had the lowest ratio,
with 1.1 more residences with an MLK address
than businesses with one. Arkansas’s ratio was
the second smallest, although the state claimed
only 39 residences and 33 businesses located on
its eight MLK streets. MLK streets in Texas
were also very commercial in nature, with a
The Nonresidential Character of MLK Streets
This section pursues a finer resolution of analysis and examines the frequency of nonresidential institutions found along MLK streets.
Using the 1996 PhoneDisc PowerFinder database,
I determined the number of residences and businesses with an MLK address. PhoneDisc defines a
“business” broadly as any nonresidential enterprise, including traditional commercial enterprises, associations, schools, physicians, and
government organizations. As of 1996, there
were 3,564 businesses with MLK addresses in
the eleven southern states under examination.
Table 2 Residence to Business Composition of MLK Streets and “Main” Streets, 1996
State
(# of Streets)
Alabama (35)
Arkansas (8)
Florida (47)
Georgia (72)
Louisiana (51)
Mississippi (65)
N. Carolina (17)
S. Carolina (11)
Tennessee (8)
Texas (54)
Virginia (5)
Region
MLK Street Address
Residential
Business
“Main” Street Address
Ratio
Business
Ratio
811
39
1,057
1,742
1,306
1,299
480
74
172
1,664
17
149
33
935
744
316
208
129
11
78
958
3
5.4
1.1
1.1
2.3
4.1
6.2
3.7
6.7
2.2
1.7
5.6
6,356
7,114
8,827
7,457
8,566
5,155
17,202
9,117
13,167
25,426
11,967
3,828
5,882
5,418
6,524
4,513
3,958
13,606
9,107
8,856
23,739
11,102
1.7
1.2
1.6
1.1
1.9
1.3
1.3
1.0
1.5
1.1
1.1
8,661
3,564
2.4
120,354
96,533
1.2
Source: Compiled by author from PhoneDisc PowerFinder (1996).
Residential
A Street Fit for a King
ratio of 1.7 to 1.0. Georgia and Tennessee had
ratios close to the regional norm, although
Georgia had far more named streets and businesses located on such streets. Six southern
states had ratios of residence to business larger
than the regional ratio of 2.4. South Carolina
had the largest, with 6.7 times more residences
located on MLK streets than businesses. However, South Carolina had only eleven named
streets, with 74 residences and eleven businesses
located on them. MLK streets in Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia were much more residential
in nature than the national or regional norm,
with ratios of 6.2, 5.4, and 5.6 to 1.0 respectively.
Louisiana followed these states with 4.1 times
more residences than businesses, and North
Carolina with 3.7 times more residences than
businesses.
In order to provide a way of comparing the
commercial composition of MLK streets relative to another street found in many cities, I
calculated the ratio of residences to businesses
located on “Main” streets in each state, which is
also presented in Table 2. These streets, by
name, denote streets of central importance—
the notion of a “main” street is a central fixture
in American urban culture and society. In some
instances, however, a city’s main thoroughfare
is not literally “Main” Street but a street of some
other name, such as “Broad.” Nevertheless,
when compared to the stereotypical American
thoroughfare of “Main” Street, MLK streets
appear to be much more residential in nature.
For example, the ratio of residences to businesses on MLK streets in Alabama, Louisiana,
and Mississippi exceeded “Main” street ratios
of residences to businesses by as much as 3
times, 2 times, and 4 times respectively. The
exceptions appear to be Arkansas and Florida,
whose ratio of residences to businesses on MLK
streets was actually lower than the ratio for their
respective state’s “Main” streets. Overall, MLK
streets in southern states were twice as residential as those states’ “Main” streets, although
varying greatly from state to state. The similarity (or dissimilarity) of MLK streets to “Main”
streets may be an indication of the relative
prominence or prestige of these named streets.
Concluding Remarks
African Americans—who are migrating back
to the South and are more likely to identify
681
themselves as southerners than in the past
(Cobb 1996)—are reshaping public representation of the region’s past and their relative importance within that past. The commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. plays a pivotal
role in the historical reconnection of black
southerners to the American South. While
fighting for such universal ideals as racial equality and social justice, the civil rights movement
was initially about establishing a more equitable place for blacks within southern society. Although eventually a figure of national and international importance, King began his career
as a southern pastor and activist. As evident in
the words of Alice Walker, the civil rights
leader is remembered for helping black southerners restore their sense of place and identity:
“He (King) gave us back our heritage. He gave
us back our homeland, the bones and dust of
our ancestors. . . . He gave us continuity of place,
without which community is ephemeral. He
gave us home” (quoted in Cobb 1999, 129-30).
The naming of streets after Martin Luther
King is an important arena for African Americans as they rewrite the landscape of southern
identity and commemoration. While less ornate and ostentatious than museums and monuments, MLK streets are powerful and highly
contested cultural geographies because of their
potential to connect disparate communities
and incorporate a vision of the past into the
spatial practices of everyday life. They reveal
the importance of location, particularly intraurban location, to public commemoration. The
politics of commemorating King in the American South are not simply struggles over convincing the public of his historical legitimacy.3
Rather, street naming is about how collective
memories and representations of MLK are
constructed and realized through various geographic contexts. By establishing the unique
nature of street naming as a form of commemoration, I have hopefully provided the rationale
for more work, not only on the toponymic
commemoration of King, but also on other
street naming patterns that would otherwise
have been neglected.
MLK streets provide windows into, not only
the importance of the person being commemorated, but also society’s relative progress in fulfilling the civil rights leader’s “dream” of racial
equality and social integration. On the one
hand, these streets do reflect empowerment
682
Volume 52, Number 4, November 2000
among blacks. The presence of so many such
streets across the South’s urban hierarchy and
in places where blacks have a significant presence is perhaps evidence of this. However, as
poignantly pointed out in a recent newspaper
article evaluating named streets as symbols of
unity and equality, “[h]is [King’s name] is on
streets just about everywhere . . . everywhere
except the white part of town. . . . The geographical reality of King’s asphalt legacy is
more about boundaries than about bridges”
(Osinski 1999, A1). When one attempts to define
the intra-urban context of King’s commemoration within several southern states, findings
suggest that MLK streets are located—whether
by choice or by force—in census areas that are
generally poorer and with more African Americans than citywide averages. However, income
levels for African Americans in MLK census
areas are not low across the board, prompting
us to reconsider the widely held belief that
named streets are in the most depressed parts
of southern cities and towns.
While MLK streets are less commercially
oriented than some may wish, they are not totally devoid of business and other nonresidential enterprises. However, analysis did reveal
unevenness in the geographic frequency of
businesses with an MLK address. When compared with the stereotypical American thoroughfare of “Main” Street, the address composition of MLK streets appear to be much more
residential in nature, although there is significant state by state variation. Future work
should examine the type of enterprises and entrepreneurs identified with MLK streets in order to fully measure the degree to which these
streets “bridge” different racial groups and economic classes or simply reinforce traditional
social “boundaries.”
The findings presented here provide only a
general insight into the spatial extent and nature of a new commemorative movement in the
American South. We will find the larger cultural geography of MLK streets by recognizing
and exploring the diversity of named streets
and adopting a more critical framework. An
important barrier to developing a more critical
study of commemorative street naming, and
place naming overall, has been the scant attention given to the intra-urban locational conflicts that make up the toponymic process. A
focus on the locational politics of MLK street
naming would examine how named streets fit
into the material and symbolic geography of
their respective cities, how the street name’s location is open to a number of different meanings among the local population, and how local
political actors and groups struggle and negotiate with each other over finding a street fit for
commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. j
Notes
It is virtually impossible to devise a universally accepted definition of the South. These states were
chosen because of past association with the Confederacy and the intense commemorative politics resulting from this association and their role in the
early civil rights movement.
2 The Census Bureau recognizes two kinds of places:
incorporated places, and census-designated places
(CDPs), which are locally recognized settled population centers by name.
3 In fact, a 1996 Southern Focus Poll of 1,222 adults nationwide showed that over 80% of southern respondents said they admired MLK somewhat (Southern
Focus Poll 1996).
1
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DEREK H. ALDERMAN (Ph.D., University of
Georgia) is Assistant Professor of Geography at East
Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858. His research interests include the cultural geographies of
the American South, the politics of place naming,
and public commemoration.